Clarient and Definiens Collaborate to Develop Image Analysis Technology for Cancer Diagnostics

Clarient, Inc. and Definiens, Inc. jointly announced that they established a strategic partnership to employ a series of image analysis platforms for Clarient's in-house research and development, and Web-based customer portal PATHSiTE(SM).

Under a five year collaborative agreement, Clarient and Definiens plan to develop and commercialize tools that will help to evaluate quantitative biomarkers that predict cancer treatment response to targeted therapies.

Ken Bloom, MD, Clarient's Chief Medical Officer, said, "The availability of image analysis tool sets is essential as we enter the age of personalized medicine. Many of the assays in development assess several intracellular processes simultaneously, and it is critical that we develop algorithms that localize and quantify key markers. We now have the ability to provide a number of image analysis tools across a wide range of technologies to help facilitate biomarker assessment for our biopharma clients in the clinical marketplace."

Bloom adds, "The Definiens agreement provides us with access to a team of scientists that have extensive experience in software development and biomarker analysis for applications in the life sciences."

"Our advanced image analysis platform is routinely used and implemented within a large base of biopharmaceutical customers," said Gregg Westerbeck, Vice President and General Manager Americas at Definiens.

"The partnership with Clarient will allow us to access to the clinical marketplace, allowing both companies to commercialize translational medicine applications. Clarient's extensive menu of biomarkers as well as its rapidly growing customer base will extend the reach of our applications,” Westerbeck said.

Clarient processes large numbers of tissue samples for biomarkers from customers worldwide for both clinical decision-making and biopharmaceutical development. These tissue samples are then converted into high-resolution digital images that are managed and analyzed over Clarient's PATHSiTE portal.

The partnership with Definiens involves seamlessly integrating a wide range of image analysis tools into Clarient's existing infrastructure. It is designed to allow Clarient to increase operational throughput with rapid, automated analysis of tissue sample images of all sizes, supporting cancer tissue biomarker profiling and facilitating more streamlined diagnoses.

The Definiens' platform utilizes proprietary image analysis algorithms to analyze multi-dimensional image data, regardless of file type, complexity and size. The software can be used to automatically identify and quantify regions of interest within breast, prostate and colon cancer tissue samples including nuclei and membranes protein quantification. The consistency and accuracy of Definiens' technology can be used to aid a pathologist, allowing for more precise biomarker analysis.